by Victor Milán
Melodía narrowed her eyes. Her father’s face had frozen when Duval fell. The two had never been friends; the gruff Riquezo often said that if his principal felt friendly toward him, he wasn’t doing his job. He served the Fangèd Throne, not its current occupant. But he had served both throne and occupants devotedly for seventy years.
Felipe was no man to ignore that fact. But he was a sucker for a gesture such as Falk’s.
“It saddens me that things had to come to this,” he said. “But I am pleased to welcome the new commander of my bodyguard. You’ve proved yourself worthy, Falk von Hornberg.”
Melodía rose and turned to go. She felt as if her whole body was clenched like a fist. She didn’t care if her ladies followed. She just wanted to get away—somewhere dark, cool, and alone.
She wasn’t trying to flee the carnage so much as her reaction to it. Disgust filled her, and sadness for a good man who had never done her harm. Yet she also felt strangely stimulated. Almost aroused.
That was harder for her to confront than the reek of vomit or the sight of a bright red pool with green-bellied flies crawling on dough-colored clumps of brain. Or even the way servants hovered at the courtyard’s edge with their buckets of sawdust and water, their scoops and brushes, waiting to clean the yellow flags.
“What’s that noise?” asked Fina, dropping her hands and looking around.
“It sounds like some disturbance in the city,” Abi said. “Must be big, if we hear it here.”
Down the loggia a commotion broke out as a pair of Scarlet Tyrants tried to bar the approach of what was unmistakably a postrider, whose springer-leather jackboots and jerkin were spattered with dried road mud.
“Your Majesty!” she cried. “An urgent dispatch from Comte Guillaume de Crève Coeur!”
“Let her through,” Felipe said. The Tyrants lowered their halberds and stepped back.
The messenger knelt three meters before the Emperor.
“Terrible news, your Majesty,” she said, proffering a scroll bound in a scarlet ribbon and sealed with a broken-heart signet in blue wax.
Mondragón took the dispatch and handed it on to Felipe. “Tell me, please,” the Emperor said.
“Count Guillaume of Crève Coeur reports that a Grey Angel has been seen Emerging in County Providence!”
* * *
“They’re coming!”
Both scout and bay mare ran with sweat in the morning heat. They’d appeared at a dead run over the rise ahead of Karyl and Rob. The light, porous tufa gravel that covered the road squeaked loudly beneath flying unshod hooves.
She reined up before the two men, at the head of the marching column.
“They’re only a few kilometers up the road,” she reported, leaning forward to pat the shoulder of her dancing, eye-rolling mount to calm her. “A dozen dinosaur knights, thirty heavy horse, a hundred house-shields. There’re forty, fifty house-bows and peasant archers, and a couple hundred levies.”
“Any idea who leads them?” asked Karyl.
“They’re following a gold cup on green banner.”
“Baron Salvateur,” said Rob. The name didn’t taste good. Guillaume’s top henchman, Salvateur was a scar-faced, hot-tempered man, and by all accounts a canny field captain. “I was hoping a fool commanded; they’re in such rich supply. Well, no need to tell me that this is war, and we get what we get, not what we want.”
Karyl had already turned away. The Providence army had begun to emerge from a dense wood of evergreen broadleaves peppered with pines. Karyl was issuing orders to deploy them at the forest’s edge.
The day was beautiful. It had briefly rained the night before. Providence had kept its roads well paved and drained even after Count Étienne abdicated, so they didn’t have to slog through a ribbon sea of mud. But the air was almost unbreathably thick with the smell of damp leaves and undergrowth.
Before them undulated gentle hills covered with wildflowers, blue as a lake on a thin-cloud day. These resembled tiny bells, gleaming as if jeweled with water droplets. Rob’s poetic nature rebelled at the notion that through this beauty a small but powerful army approached, bent on destroying him and his friends.
Remember, he told himself, no day’s too fair to die on, nor too foul either.
Gaétan, mounted on Zhubin, was helping Karyl’s other lieutenants chivvy the militia’s leading elements into the undergrowth to either side of the road. Karyl wore the same helmet and leather coat he had in the Whispering Woods. Gaétan was similarly kitted-out.
Anticipating hotter and closer action, Rob had opted for heavier: a breast-and-back of bony-scaled armadón hide; a light linen blouse beneath, with just enough sleeve to keep the arm-holes from chafing; cuisses of nosehorn hide boiled in wax strapped over the thighs of yellow silk trousers. An open-faced steel burgonet, with a crest and a bit of bill to protect his face, topped the ensemble. His round shield hung from one side of his saddle, his axe, Wanda, from the other.
“What’s this nonsense?”
Rob turned in his saddle, scowling. Longeau drummed up at a brisk trot on his white gelding rouncy. His fellow town lords followed close behind, forcing foot soldiers to dive off the right-of-way into the ditch or be trampled.
“Why are we stopping?” Percil demanded in a voice as pinched and querulous as his face. “We hear the enemy’s been seen. We must attack without delay!”
“We’re taking up positions in the woods,” Karyl said. “They’re our best defenses. Neither their foot nor their mounted forces can attack us en bloc there. And they can’t easily pursue us if we have to withdraw.”
“What’s this?” Longeau almost screamed. “Defend? Withdraw?”
“We must attack!” Percil said.
“That’s suicide,” Karyl said.
“Enough of this defeatist scratcher-shit,” Yannic said to Longeau. “What says the Council?”
Longeau drew an arming-sword and brandished it in a glittering circle over his head. “Forward, men and women of Providence!” he bellowed. “Forward to victory.”
“Stop that,” Karyl said. “I command here.”
“Not anymore,” Percil said.
Melchor puffed his fat bearded cheeks. “Enough of this make-believe. A member of the Council leads us now.”
“And the serfs will obey us, as they’re accustomed to,” Yannic said.
“The townsmen too, if they know what’s good for them,” added Percil.
“In the name of the Master Gardeners of Beauty and Truth,” Longeau trumpeted at the bewildered volunteers, “I command you: forward!”
To Rob’s horror they obeyed. Raising a wild cheer at the urging of house-soldiers wearing the colors of Percil, Yannic, and that fat fraud Melchor, the army surged forward. They split around Nell and Asal like water around rocks, and went streaming up the road at an eager trot.
Few so much as glanced at Karyl.
“Spare no one!” Yannic cried, waving his sword. He spurred his strider to a two-legged run to take the lead. It clacked its beak anxiously, and its ruff stood out stiffly to the sides. Cuget of the Council rode after him, waving an arming-sword and hollering. Melchor on his pony, and Percil on his big black stallion, hung back to continue shouting encouragement to the militia, as if afraid sense might suddenly break out.
Travise and Ismaël rode by, aloof and distant atop their mountainous hadrosaurs. They steered courteously to either side of Rob and Karyl. The infantry in their path had to step lively or get trodden into the tufa, of course.
Gaétan had turned his spike-frill to face the road, and sat staring aghast as the army of Providence fled almost gaily to meet the unseen enemy.
“What’s the matter with you?” Rob shouted at Karyl in sudden anger. “You’re the most famous field captain in Nuevaropa! Why don’t you order them to stop?”
“Never give an order you know won’t be obeyed.”
The human torrent began to thin. Most of the militia had already vanished over the blue-covered hill. Suddenly Luca
s was by Karyl’s stirrup. The painter was almost hopping from foot to sandaled foot in indecision as his comrades flowed past. He wore a light leather tunic and his new longsword with its hilt sticking up above one shoulder. His face was red and wracked beneath the pale bangs sticking out beneath the brim of his plain steel cap.
Karyl’s own face was as tormented as if one of his killing headaches had struck full force. “Don’t, boy,” he said. “Please, don’t go.”
“But you don’t understand,” Lucas said. “You came; you’ll go. We’ve always had the town lords, and we always will. We’ve always obeyed them. And they’ll find ways to punish us if we don’t now.”
“We can change that,” Karyl said. “Together. You know we can.”
Lucas stilled. “Well—”
Guat the farmer ran past, his belly bouncing over his grimy leather loincloth. He had a spear in his hand and a leather helmet askew on his head.
“Come on, lad,” he called. “Glory’s this way! All you’ll find here is a coward’s shame.”
Lucas gave Karyl a last agonized look. “I’m sorry,” he said, and ran along with the rest.
Karyl lowered his head and squeezed shut his eyes.
“I failed you, boy,” he said, so softly Rob could barely hear him from the cheers and the thumping of heedless feet. “I should have trained you better.”
He opened his eyes and shook his head once quickly, as if clearing water from his hair.
“Right. Now let’s get busy saving what we can.”
Chapter 43
Eris, La Luna Visible, the Moon Visible—The moon we see at night when the clouds usually clear. As distinct from La Luna Invisible, the Moon Invisible, where pious girls and boys know the Creators lived when they made Paradise out of Old Hell. It of course cannot be seen, but nevertheless, it is there.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
Filled with dark joy and darker purpose, his new scarlet cape of office flapping from his shoulders, Falk von Hornberg strode the corridors of the Firefly Palace. A fist of five Scarlet Tyrants trotted behind.
The Empire was overdue for revolution. He was bringing it. Not to overthrow the Emperor, but to give him all the power an Emperor should wield.
Falk had worked hard and fast to consolidate his own power once Felipe confirmed him as the new chief of his Imperial bodyguard. Now was the time to take the last and boldest steps.
They came to a door. Gently, Falk tried the latch. It was locked.
“What if we brought the Angel,” a voice like an overgrown child’s half sobbed from the door’s far side, “for our sin of plotting against the Emperor? Our own kinsman!”
“If the Grey Angels went on crusade every time there was a little plotting,” said a second, supercilious voice, “they’d never stop.”
“How many times must I tell you, Benedicto?” came a third voice, crisply precise but touched with weariness, “Nobody’s plotting against Felipe. We only want to get his attention. You’re overreacting to this imaginary apparition.”
“La-la-la-la! I can’t hear you! It scares me when you call the Grey Angels imaginary, Gonzalo! Please don’t.”
Falk smiled. Then, rearranging his face in a suitable scowl, he looked to his squad.
“Break it down,” he said.
Doors in the Palace of the Fireflies were well built and sturdy. They’d laugh at a mere boot. A heavy bronze ram wielded by four husky Scarlet Tyrants proved less humorous.
With a squealing groan the door blew inward.
The little man with the outsized head sprang from his chair facing the door. A rapier in a ruby-set scabbard hung from a twisted bronze lampstand. As the cabo in charge of the Tyrant squad preceded Falk inside, he yanked out the long, slim blade with a sliding ring.
“Gonzalo Delgao, you are hereby placed under arrest—”
The Tyrant corporal saw steel pointed his way, glinting yellow in the lamplight. The Emperor’s bodyguards were trained to respond with bowstring speed. The cabo interrupted himself in mid-oration to ram his arming-sword through the sternum of the armed but unresisting Gonzalo.
The little man gasped and went to his knees.
“You hurt my brother!” roared Benedicto. His neck and the veins in his face engorging in fury, he picked up a heavy table of blueheart wood and slammed it down on the sidewise crest of the Tyrant’s helmet.
“Benedicto, stop!” shouted Falk von Hornberg, sidestepping the cabo, who lay head-to-head with Gonzalo. His outflung fingers twitched as their blood mingled on a formerly splendid Ovdan carpet.
Fists knotted so tightly the knuckles cracked, Benedicto rushed the Duke. As he cocked his right arm for a blow, Falk stepped to meet him, grabbing his left forearm and right biceps. Benedicto was even bigger than Falk, and weeping mad with grief and rage. For a moment each pushed against the other, so wound around the effort they couldn’t speak. Then Falk shoved the bigger man stumbling back, to fall on his broad rump on the tiled floor.
“Benedicto—” Falk said. Agile as a schoolboy, the big man scrambled up and rushed him again. He didn’t charge head-lowered like a nosehorn bull, but upright, looking to smash the interloper with his fists. Tears streamed down a face the color of sun-bleached bone.
Falk’s left hand whipped a broad-bladed cinquedea, a five-finger dagger, from his belt. He planted his right palm against Benedicto’s breastbone, trying to ward him off with a stiff-arm. Benedicto drove him back toward the door, one pace, two.
The dagger bit like a viper: once, twice, so many times in blinding succession Falk himself lost count. Benedicto squealed like an enraged Tyrannosaurus. Blood flew from his mouth, to splash hot across Falk’s bearded face and down his gilded breastplate. He kept pushing hard against Falk’s outstretched arm until he suddenly stiffened and his eyes rolled up in his head. He went limp and fell down dead.
The other four Tyrants had laid aside their ram and come into the room to help their new commander, spears at the ready. They saw their fallen cabo.
René Alarcón had been caught standing by a wall hanging that portrayed the Rape of La Merced, pouring wine from a decanter. He set it down on a cabinet beside his cup and arched a disdainful brow at Falk.
“You’ve a brisk way with the bereaved,” said Alarcón. “If your Grace’s wits were as sharp as your steel, perhaps—”
A Tyrant stuck his spear into the nobleman’s open mouth. Its tip poked out the back of his skull with a crunch. Alarcón’s eyes snapped wide with final surprise.
“That should hold your tongue, traitor,” the guard snarled as Alarcón collapsed.
Falk frowned around at the bloody shambles the room had become in a matter of heartbeats. He hated to think what his mother would have said of this state of affairs.
I see I’m going to have to do something about the Tyrants being quite so quick to stab first and ask questions later.
Still, thinking about it, perhaps things had worked out for the best. The three dead men’s silence was more useful than anything they could say. Traitors had resisted justice and died; inconvenient details could be concealed readily enough by the leader of the Emperor’s bodyguards.
Public examples were needed. They would be made. That was all accounted for.
Now Falk needed something else. Still frowning, now deliberately, he swung his gaze to the surviving member of the quartet. He still held the dripping dagger in his hand.
Augusto Manorquín, as sleek as a house cat, had never so much as uncrossed his legs where he sat in a velvet chair whose green matched his doublet.
Correctly reading the question on Falk’s face, Manorquín raised much-beringed hands, spread wide with pale palms forward.
“Whatever suits the needs of the State,” he said, “I will happily confess to.”
Falk smiled through drying blood. “Wise man,” he said.
* * *
Barely pausing to wipe the blood from face and armor with a rag a Tyrant handed him, Falk handed ov
er his prisoner and set off on his next errand. A fresh puño of guardsmen followed. Their corporal, rather older and more weathered than the last, kept them alert and eager as vexers on the leash. They’d heard what happened to the previous squad-leader.
Falk took a shortcut outside through soft sunset air, between a guest wing of the sprawling main residence and the tower that housed the Imperial apartments. The clouds were breaking apart into bands of slate underlit with orange-and-yellow forge light along the eastern sky above La Merced. The first stars glittered in indigo overhead. Fireflies danced below them like living lanterns. The wind was fresh from the Channel, smelling of salt and the greenery of Anglaterra on the far side.
Instead of the cheerful music and laughter that usually greeted day’s end in the Palace of the Fireflies, Falk heard hushed conversation on every side. Somewhere someone sobbed heartbrokenly.
He smiled.
Panic had spread rapidly through the palace and the city below. News of the Angel’s Emergence had taken even Falk aback. Not because he thought it was true, but rather because its timing and import so perfectly capped off Bergdahl’s machinations, building suspicion against Providence and the Garden over the weeks since the army departed.
Falk knew Bergdahl and his mother communicated regularly, in a code the best cryptographers he could find in La Merced—something of a hotbed of the trade—had so far proven unable to break. Could they somehow have had advance knowledge of the Grey Angel’s Emergence?
He immediately dismissed that as absurd. If the Dowager Duchess knew all this was going to happen, corroborating that the fabled Angels existed would be among its least unsettling ramifications.
Entering the tower, he led his squad up the spiraling staircase to the Imperial apartments. Precisely on schedule: a pair of Tyrants stood flanking a door that was swinging open even as Falk led his men into the corridor.
Mondragón, dressed in his usual loose robes of brown and black, halted a step outside the door. The expression on his gaunt raptor-beaked face never changed. But Falk read the knowledge in the slightest flicker in those obsidian-flake eyes.
“So this is how it goes,” the tall old man said, with the slightest of aristocratic lifts of his brow. “I admit I am surprised. Well played, young man. Well played.”